Oak relaxes a bit when Trill says she’s not sad. He accepts her necklace and reads her note... He looks down at her gift and thinks it far outweighs his shop-bought one. “You honour me with this. I’ll wear this with pride and keep it safe for you, I promise... Is beautiful. Thank you!”. He ties it to hang alongside his owl necklace. And seeing Trill so happy brings a huge smile to his face.

He accepts another hug and hugs her back, “Come on, we have a big day tomorrow. We best get some rest”. He’ll watch as she returns to hers and Caelynn’s room.

Before heading back to his room, he checks on Aimon. He thinks about tying his laces together or something like that but thinks better of it and just pulls his blanket up a bit for him.

He’s relieved that she liked her gift. And he falls into a peaceful sleep, in all his gear, with his feet and head hanging off the ends of the bed.

As the party settles down for a peaceful sleep, they dream of peaceful dreams, the first they have had in a long time. The fire cheerfully crackles in its hearth, indifferent to the malevolent, demonic force seeping into the city. Madness and insanity cloaks the city in its shadow as the demon lords play with reality. Friends turn on friends, sibling on sibling, and Demogorgan laughs as chaos takes foot in the city.

Something stirs in the shadows of the common room. In the corner, the darkness form a into a finely dressed drow that steps out of the shadows. Wisps of darkness trail from his form as he approaches unheard towards Aimon. As he bends over slightly and sets a small pouch on the couch need Aimon, an fine broach glisten in the firelight that clasps his cloak on. He gives a small, cruel smile that doesn't reach his crimson eyes as he fades back into the darkness. As he does, he whispers before the shadows claim him, "You think you and your friends can defeat me?" He scoffs, "You will all be dancing to my tune soon enough. No one can defeat Graz'zt." As darkness swallows the disguised demon lord, everyone sleeps on uninterrupted.

That morning, Aimon is awoken by a sharp rap on the door. "Breakfast! Your breakfast is here!" a woman shouts outside the door.

Aimon jerks awake, disoriented, looking around realizing that he was dreaming, and even now the thin filaments of his dream break apart and drift away. He shakes his head then look at the door as someone knocks on the other side.

He jumps up and pushes the couch away from the door, noticing a small pouch resting on it. Was that there before?

With one hand he picks up the pouch and with the other he opens the door.

He smiles at whomever has brought them breakfast, but he's already distracted by the pouch again and looks inside.

Before turning in, Trill attunes to her new footwear and flies around the room above the sleeping Caelynn and Stool. She eventually settles down and has her best nights sleep in a long time.

Caelynn has been up for a couple of hours working on her armor when she hears faint knocking at the main door. She knows she should enjoy the comfort and safety of the tavern and sleep while she can, but old habits are hard to break. She gently shakes Trill and Stool awake, then heads out to the common room. Seeing that Aimon has opened the door but become distracted by the contents of a pouch she doesn't recognize, she accepts the food from the woman with a grateful smile.

Oak wakes up cosy and comfortable and doesn’t move... A few minutes later he half-opens his eyes and still lays there. Then he hears others up in the common room and starts to stretch. And then he smells breakfast, and he’s up and moves through to the communal area. “Everyone sleep okay?”, he asks, sleepily surveying the room and stretching again.

You open the door, and a burly dwarven woman pushes a cart laden with food into the room. She is very muscular, muscular enough to rival Oak. She is wearing  maid outfit that looks comical on her form, and she is putting on a large cigar hanging from one side of her mouth. When says in a rough smoker's voice with a Bostonian accent, "I'm Agatha, and I'll be back for the cart in an hour. " She blows a large cloud of smoke into the room as she leaves and closes the door behind her.

Breakfast composes of your choice of scrambled eggs that taste off from what you expect, grainy pancakes, bacon and sausage from an unknown source, a savory mushroom sauce with bits of something green in it, frothy milk, and a spicy juice.

Throughout the meal, Topsy seems a bit more fidgety than normal. 

Caelynn, as you eat, you are surprised when Stool steps out into the room. You see he has grown nearly 2 feet overnight. Two arms now extend from a total under his mushroom cap, and five gray eyes blink at the light in the room.

Aimon, you open the pouch and reveal your mother's wedding ring resting inside of it. You know without a doubt it is here because you use to steal it from her as a practical joke. Every knick and scratch is in the same place.

Aimon looks away from the pouch and then back inside it again. He then hands the bag to Oak and Caelynn.

"Could you please look in there and tell me if you see a ring with a couple of knicks on the inside and a scratch that almost reaches the intricate leaves on the top?" Aimon says in as steady a voice as he can. "Just feeling a bit off at the moment and want to see if my eyes are tricking me."

He pauses, clenches his hands, and opens them again, wriggling his fingers

"Because if that's what you see, then somehow my mother's wedding ring showed up on the couch in the middle of the night. And that's got me on the edge of a full blown freak out."

"I guess you're not going to fit in the bag anymore," Caelynn remarks with a surprised chuckle when Stool steps out of the room.

Her brow furrows as she takes the bag from Aimon and holds the ring up to the light. "But that's..... how did somebody get in here? And how did they get this? Either this is the real thing, which is concerning for obvious reasons...... or they made a copy somehow? But to do that they would have to have seen the real one close enough to get the details right, or they looked into your memories somehow, which is also less than ideal." She turns it over in her fingers, muttering to herself, then passes it over to Oak.

Oak has started breakfast already when Caelynn passes him the ring. He stops and and takes a look over it. “What does this mean?”, he asks, looking from Aimon to the ring and back again, before passing Aimon the ring back. “Is your mum here?.. How far away did you grow up... ..When did you last see her?”. He looks puzzled but takes another mouthful while he mulls it all over...

Aimon takes the ring back, turning it over in his hand before slipping it into his pouch for safe keeping. He then turns back to Oak and laughs to himself.

"Oak," he begins. "I have no idea where here is. I'm from Myls Dorthore, which itself is a bit off the beaten path. Caelynn, may have heard of it, but I would be surprised if any of the rest of you have. We don't dislike outsiders, but apart from my mother and a couple of others, it's an elven community."

He pauses before continuing.

"I wasn't exactly awake for the trip here. But before that, my mother and father were both healthy and in Myls Dorthore. She was acting as a moderator between my father and a visiting Drow lord. The drow never came to our town. Ever."

He looks down at his pouch.

"The drow lord may be here. In Gracklstugh. Shushar described someone that fit his description on his way here," Aimon says. "I always assumed he just whisked me away and had me sent to the jails. I never thought he might have done more. But even if he took my mother's ring. How did he get in here last night?"

“I might have heard of it once or twice. My home was pretty similar.” Caelynn nods, trying to remember if it ever came up in her studies. “And that’s suspicious, to say the least. ‘Drow’ and ‘diplomat’ don’t exactly fit in the same sentence.”

Walking over to the couch, she pushes it a few inches, wincing at the squeaking noise it makes against the floor. “It would be pretty hard to move that out of the way without waking you. So either he came in through some secret passage or he used magic.”

Aimon nods and takes a tour of the common room, looking for the obvious signs of secret hidden doors. 

(Perception 26  )

"Though I have to say I would be leaning towards magic. I don't picture this guy as the innkeeper sort who would know all the hidden passages around this place."

He looks back over at the couch.

"We'll need to stay vigilant, and I may take a bit of a tour of the entire inn later to see if I can find this guy, but in the meantime, we might want to go about our day as if this didn't happen. Go see our giant guide and see what that's about, and" Aimon suddenly stops when his search of the room brings Stool into view,. "What in the Nine Hells happened to you?"

Oak half spits out a mouthful of breakfast as Aimon points out Stool, who he hadn’t noticed until now. “Blimey!...”, he says spinning round and gawking at Stool’s new shape...

Stool opens his new mouth and spews out a orange cloud of spores that engulfs everyone. It your minds, he happily says, "I molted! My skin is in the other room." With that, he walks around the room and runs his lumpy hands over everything, enjoying this new sensation."

Jimjar, who had fork halfway to his mouth, grimaced and says, "That's nasty."

Aimon, you don't find any signs of hidden doors.

Is everyone fine with skipping ahead to meet the Captain of the Guard?

((Does Stool's mind speak count as Trill having heard it, for the purposes of being able to mimic him?))

Trill has spent breakfast restisting the urge to use her gift from Oak frivolously.

Oak composes himself a little, and nods at Stool, “Well, you look mighty grown up now, that’s for sure! Good on you, little one!... .. Can you hold weapons now? Or perform tricks or anything?... maybe we’ll get you a club or a bow or something, eh? What do you think?!...”.

He also notices Trill is wearing her new sandals, and gives her a smile and a wink.

Then he looks over to Aimon and Caelynn, “hHMmmmph... How much trouble can one drow be anyway? If he comes back around this way again he better watch out, I say!... gGRruuumph...”.

((I'm going to say yes. You can mimic his voice))

Stool responds, "I want to use a bow just like Caelynn!" He pantomimes shooting an arrow from a bow and make the appropriate "Pew! Pew!" sounds. You're not sure he could because his hands comprise of a nub and a thumb (He effectively has cartoon hands).

Feel free to continue talking. I'm going to describe the next scene.

The party heads out into the streets towards the Keep where Captain Blackskull told you to meet her. It's a short, 10 minute walk to the Keep. The Keep is a massive, imposing structure that looms over the other buildings near the Darklake. You can see guards surrounding the entranced once to the keep, all of them standing in salute position. As you approach the entrance, a guard materializes out the air in front of you and commands, "Halt! State your business!"

 ((I couldn't find a picture of the actual keep, so I'm improvising. It looks similar to the one I posted on Discord, but it doesn't have the green mist, floating structures, the glowing beacon, and it's underground))

Aimon looks at Stool's 'hands' and then says "Maybe we can improvise something."

As they head to the Keep, Aimon keeps an eye out for any Drow they come across. How could someone with his mother's ring have known where he would end up? He didn't know until a day before they were here that they would even come here.

When they get to the keep and the guard shouts too loudly at them, Aimon looks over at Oak and Caelynn.

"You two speak soldier, right?" Aimon asks. "I would be more inclined to embellish and distract our way past, which might not be appropriate right now. This one seems to need someone to bark orders back at them."

"I'll have to teach you someday," Caelynn tells Stool with a smile. "But when we're outside, with lots of room," she hastily adds, imagining everything that could go wrong in such a confined space.

As they walk towards the keep, she keeps a careful eye out for Stool, making sure that he's keeping up with the group okay. It's strange not having the familiar weight of him wiggling around in her backpack.

Upon seeing the guard materialize, Caelynn steps forward. "We helped defeat the giant in the marketplace yesterday, sir. Captain Blackskull summoned us to meet with her," she says with a sharp nod and a professional tone.